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SOME THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN
Everyone is an expert on marriage, but I have had a long
time to think about it, and it is something that is discussed
so very much everywhere--television, papers and people talk
about it a lot. One thing seems certain: the most important
thing in life is a successful marriage+. One hears much talk
as if marriage were just a quaint custom imposed on people.
But in studying various small groups all over the world and
throughout history, I have never found any surviving tribe of
people that did not have some sort of marriage system. The
late Hux1ey claimed that a baby born today is about the same
as one born 30,000 years ago, and that evolution was really
an evolution of culture. All people survived as small
groups, and the groups with the best culture tended to
survive. Part of that culture was some sort of marriage
system. Human beings are the only creatures that are aware
they will die some day. Most forms of life don't even know
they were born; they just exist as they happen to come along.
When people get sort of middle-aged, or almost any time, and
the full realization that they will die rather bothers them,
they search for some sort of immortality. One way is through
the children. But unless the children carry on the same way
of life, there is not much feeling of immortality. So people
have children and try to pass on the values they have
inherited or acquired from their parents or grandparents or
from the village.
Everybody talks about marriage, so what do I talk about?
Well, my main concern has been health, and marriage is a part
of that. A good marriage or a bad marriage certainly affects
one's health. So what do I say to people? I try to persuade
people to adopt a way of life that is suitable to them and to
reality. To a thirteen year old girl, I would say that in
the next four or five years, you will be developing your
secondary sex characteristics. It is a learning period. It
is a time to develop survival skills. You should no longer
consider yourself a child but an apprenticed adult.
If your people came from the far north, like Scandinavia
or northern Germany, you will take longer to become an adult.
Many people consider learning merely a matter of going to
school and college. But all learning is self-learning. At
one time, every child was born into some sort of an
established way of life or culture. If a child is lucky
enough to be born into a successful culture, the parents and
the village will imprint a set of values that have been
established over generations.
Today, many schools or possibly most of them, try to be
value centers. They want the parents to be the facilities to
produce the children. I tell parents and the teenagers that
the families should be the value centers and the schools the
facilities. I have told hundreds of people about the swamp
system. Imagine a beautiful castle full of treasure,
surrounded by a swamp. The castle is full of treasures of
knowledge and facilities The child should try to get
through the swamp with the least difficulty. When the child
gets to the castle, as much treasure as possible should be
retrieved and brought back.
They should not waste time just fooling around,
quarreling or getting mixed up with political issues, or
being dominated by a peer group. A so-called peer group,
which is actually a misconception, is really an age group.
The question is: what should a child learn? All of us
should be students. People of every age should be learning
and exchanging knowledge with other people. They should
learn from observation and test by experience. We do not
live long enough to learn by trial and error. That's all
very well for turtles, but we are high on the evolutionary
tree.
The number one thing to learn is the ability to
communicate. The most important thing for any child or any
person at any age is to learn to communicate. Knowing a
vocabulary is not enough. If children are segregated by age
group, they do not learn the language well, and they just
pool their ignorance. A child or young person should be able
to talk to all age groups. Many children and adults are poor
readers. However, people who speak well will have no
difficulty reading. Many schools will have several hundred
children or teenagers in one age group or one class. This is
very unnatural. I have said to hundreds of young people, "If
you do not learn from the old birds, you will never learn at
all."
Memorizing is very important in learning to talk. I
believe that every student should have memorized about 10,000
lines of poetry and songs and proverbs and all sorts of
things of that nature.
One big question is: What should a person learn? What
should they know? Well, a young person should know about
food and agriculture, how we survive, how people all over
grow their food and cook it, and about sanitation.
Presently, the farmland all over the world is being damaged,
and so hundreds of millions of people will starve. Right
here in California we are damaging our land. The more water
we send down to southern California, the more they damage the
land with flood irrigation. We should all be aware of this.
Our country no longer has a food surplus. The grain we ship
abroad is mostly feed grain grown with artificial fertilizers
made from oil.
The great gift of being born human is the ability to
communicate verbally and to use our hands. In the motor part
of the brain, a tremendous percentage of the area is for hand
movements and speech movements, but these should be developed
young. A young person should not waste his youth with idle
activities and just having fun or playing rough games or any
games. That's really for children, but a young adult should
be very serious about this long learning period. No country
in the world gives young people a longer time to learn than
our country, and if they waste it, they might as well have
been born into a backward society.
So every young person should learn to cook sensibly--not
just make a lemon pie, but manage a household and cook for a
group. They should study foreign cookbooks to see how other
people live. They should study Chinese agriculture, the rice
paddies, and how the Chinese have maintained the same land
for up to 4,000 years.
All young people should know enough survival skills.
cooking, sewing, gardening and enough bookkeeping skill to
keep track of things. I met a woman who had been left a widow
with three children. By doing accounting work for several
small businesses, she was able to support herself and family
and had flexible hours.
A young person should be a really good typist w which
is really the basis for word processing. They should know at
least one foreign language well. This helps employability.
It can help your children and can add to the joy of life.
The best bet is to become a successful homemaker married to
someone worth loving. Have fine children who have been
imprinted with good cultural and survival values. This can
add many joyful years to each others lives. The extra
skills give extra security. Also more fun. It makes one
more worthy of friendship.
I will not try to tell anyone all they should learn
for once they acquire the Joy of Learning, they can be
learning everyday of their lives. I am not suggesting
being a book worm but a wise choice of reading can give us a
fuller life. In the meantime, avoid the junk food and try to
prevent others from filling your memory bank with garbage.
